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It appears to be Iain Murray’s job over at the Corner™ to openly deny the existence of global warming for the corporate cozies. He lays his supposed smackdown thus:

There's a definite whiff of a co-ordinated scare campaign over global warming at the moment. There have been some questionable doomsday papers in the major science journals Science and Nature, complete with policy recommendations in the body of the science, front page articles in the Washington Post, cover stories from Time magazine, and a major new advertising campaign from Environmental Defense and, shame on them, the Ad Council. All these attacks seem dedicated to scaring Congress into some sort of action to force Americans to cut back on their economy-sustaining use of energy.

First of all, there is nothing new in the science to justify such alarmism. Pat Michaels has the lowdown on that here.

Well Pat Michaels says no problem so QED no problem. So I am in no way a journalist, but let’s take just a little look at the 'ole World Climate Report he links to, shall we? Here is a list of institutes that take money from Exxon , notice a little place at the bottom called World Climate Report? Here is a description:

A newsletter on global warming, ozone, "sound science". WCR is sponsored by the Greening Earth Society, a Western Fuels Association project founded to spread the "good news" that global warming is benficial for the planet. 

WCR describes itself as "the perfect antidote against those who argue for proposed changes to the Rio Climate Treaty, such as the Kyoto Protocol, which are aimed at limiting carbon emissions from the United States." (http://www.co2andclimate.org/climate/overview/overview.htm) World Climate Report is a "who's who" of climate skeptics. Patrick Michaels is the Chief editor with Robert Balling as contributing editor. World Climate Report also employs the expertise of Robert Davis (colleague of Michaels' at the University of Virginia) as Associate Editor. Past contributors have included Thomas Gale Moore, resident climate change skeptic of the George C. Marshall and Cato Institutes, Mark Mills from Mills McCarthy and Associates Inc., (which produced two books for Western Fuels Association in 1997 according to 1997 annual report, including "Coal: Cornerstone of America's Competitive Advantage in World Markets") and Willie Soon, also a former visiting scientist at the Marshall Institute.

Hmm. The Marshall Institute. Interesting. Weren’t they the ones that funded the Independent Commission on Environmental Education (ICEE) to combat “bias” in classrooms about global warming? Don’t they also get money from Exxon?I wonder if you look at who was actually on the ICEE, what names might you see? Wow, what a coincidence. All three of the contributors to WCR were on that committee. What are the odds? Here are a few other tidbits on the gang leader Patrick J. Michaels:

Writing in Harpers Magazine in 1995, author Ross Gelbspan noted that "Michaels has received more than $115,000 over the last four years from coal and energy interests. World Climate Review, a quarterly he founded that routinely debunks climate concerns, was funded by Western Fuels."-snip-Dr. John Holdren of Harvard University told the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, "Michaels is another of the handful of US climate-change contrarians... He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science."

Well QED indeed. Seeing that all these guys are on the Exxon payroll (and other energy companies), I am sure it hasn’t clouded their judgment at all (with billowing exhaust fumes). The word of a few contrary voices from a bunch of hacks completely compromised by funding from the energy industry does not invalidate literally thousands of climatologists around the world. It is a classic example of believing what you want to believe because the alternative is too unpleasent to deal with. The only thing coordinated is the attack on sound, conclusive science. There will be a special place in hell for those corporate shills who literally undermine the entire population of the earth with their sell-out.

The Times does its second hit piece on the Donald this time by Paul Eaton a retired Major General who was in charge of training Iraqi troops:

Mr. Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his cold warrior's view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result, the Army finds itself severely undermanned — cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.

Roy Edroso pointed out that Peggy Noonan hurled the worst possible insult she can at Shrub:

"This week's column is a question, a brief one addressed with honest curiosity to Republicans. It is: When George W. Bush first came on the scene in 2000, did you understand him to be a liberal in terms of spending?"

Wash your mouth out with soap Crazy Jesus Lady. This is the classic move Digby describes (sorry don't have the link) where the conservatives lavish praise on their leaders' conservative principles, until those leaders clearly shit the bed, then they call them liberals. So we have had the loons over at the Corner start to jump ship about the Iraq war and now CJL from the WSJ is bailing on the economic policy. I said back in December that it felt like the elite powers were starting to turn on Bush the lesser. Now we are seeing a steady stream of the conservative noise makers stating that this or that aspect of the president is problematic. We will see a continued increase in this noise as they start paint GW as the monkey he is (should be easy as they don't acually have to make anything up, the truth will suffice), and they will start to groom the white knight to replace him (McCain, Clinton?). Whoever it is, one thing you can be certain of, s/he will be no friend of anyone but the corporations.

Cross posted at Really Small Fish

Here is the headline of a piece in the WaPo written by Josh White:Detainee in Photo With Dog Was 'High-Value' SuspectOne might get a sense that maybe just a little torture might be okay if he really was a "high-value" suspect, eh? The second paragraph reads like this:

Although officials characterized the other detainees who appeared in the Abu Ghraib photographs as common criminals and rioters, the orange-clad detainee seen cowering before the dog was different. Detainee No. 155148 was considered a high-value intelligence source suspected of having close ties to al-Qaeda. According to interviews, sworn statements from soldiers and military documents obtained by The Washington Post, Ashraf Abdullah Ahsy was at the center of a military intelligence "special project" designed to break him down, and was considered important enough that his interrogation was mentioned in a briefing to high-ranking intelligence officials at the Pentagon.

Gee, I feel my resolve weakening, maybe just the dogs, but nothing more okay? At least he was a "high-value" suspect so he had it coming.